Assessing Virtual Collaborative Environment performance mediated by web-based conversational mechanisms 35 Silvia Rodriguez-Donaire Engineering Management Department BarcelonaTECH - ETSEIAT Colom 11 - 08222 Terrassa - Spain +34.937.398.696 silvia.rodriguez-donaire@upc.edu Daniel Garcia-Almiñana Engineering Projects Department BarcelonaTECH - ETSEIAT Colom 11 - 08222 Terrassa - Spain +34.937.398.921 daniel.garcia@upc.edu Iryna Barodzich IESE Business School - Dpt. Strategic Management Avinguda Pearson, 21- 08034 Barcelona - +34.932.534.200 IBarodzich@iese.edu ABSTRACT The aim of this Work in Progress (WiP) is to assess the effect of using chat and thread discussion on effectiveness of collaboration through Web-Based Collaborative Environments (WBCEs), particularly platform wikis. In order to prove that, this WiP will describe the experiment with four different scenarios that will be conducted in the following days. Each scenario is formed by 16 groups of three random students from Technical studies at the ETSEIAT, an UPC Engineering School, particularly candidates from Industrial and Aeroespace Engineering. Some of the groups will work in face-to- face basis (control group) and the others will use the WBCEs. The groups that are using the WBCEs scenario will be using whether the wiki platform only or the wiki platform integrated with an online communication tool (chat or forum). In the last three scenarios, each member will have one computer and the communication among the members of the group will be made through the assigned WBCE. These groups have to deliver the final team collaboration report through the wiki space. On the other hand, the Face-to-Face group has to deliver the final collaboration report in a paper format. We expect that this WiP would bring up new insights on WBCEs effectiveness. We expect that the groupware performance will improve by means of the online communication tools, because they promote social interaction, discussion and collaboration in online environments. However, we are dealing with students that are “technology based learners” and a preliminary results conducted in a pre-pilot experiment show that some of our assumptions differ from what we expected. Keywords Wiki; Web-Based Collaborative Environment (WBCE); Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL); online communication tools; effectiveness of collaboration. 1. INTRODUCTION A new generation of web-based collaborative tools such as social networking sites, blogs, wikis, etc. has increased in popularity, availability, and performance in recent years. These web services are commonly referred in the Web2.0 technologies literature. Term officially coined by O‟Reilly Media in 2007 [1]. The author emphasize that web-based tools facilitate a more socially connected web where everyone is able to communicate, participate, collaborate and add to and edit the information space [2, 3, 4]. We are going to refer to these tools as Web-Based Collaborative Environments (WBCEs) that allow asynchronous and synchronous Distributed Learning Groups (DLGs). Particularly, this WiP is focused on wikis - simple websites that anyone can edit-, which we include in the WBCEs. Wiki enables groups to jointly coordinate their effort to solve, create and share content for ad-hoc problems [5] with decentralized knowledge sources [6]. This platform can house large and up-to-date knowledge repositories [7] and enhance the creation and transmission of knowledge among users by means of dynamic interactions [8]. Currently, an increasingly interest is growing in web-based environments for collaboration. For instance, the Information System (IS) community is paying considerable attention on how these new Web2.0 technologies can change business practices [9] and create new internal participation architecture at businesses [10]. However, there is a poor knowledge about the online communication tools (i.e. instant messaging) effectiveness on collaboration through WBCEs. According to previous [7,8] results, “wikis should include some form of discussion board or instant messaging to make communication accessible and come to a consensus on a topic”. Additionally, [11] since the authors said “the lack of discussions tools within the wiki tool seemed to be another factor that hindered collaboration”. In sum, according to these authors, an additional web-based communication tool will be necessary to allow task coordination to distribute the group tasks. However, [12] said that Web2.0 technologies are changing the way students: learn and create new ideas; share and communicate their knowledge and findings; and, interact and collaborate among them. The preliminary results of our pre-pilot show results according to that author, as can be seen WEE2011, September 27-30, 2011, Lisbon, Portugal. Editors: Jorge Bernardino and José Carlos Quadrado.